The Train Was On Time Read Online Free PDF

drink, had to drink, to pour something, anything, into that abyss.…
    “The funny part is,” the man burst out hoarsely, “the funny part is that I’m on leave. Till next Wednesday, a whole week. But I just cleared out. My wife is … my wife,” he was choking on something terrible between a sob and rage. “My wife, you see,” he said, “has got someone else. Yes,” he laughed abruptly, “that’s right, she’s got someone else, my friend. Funny thing, you go all over Europe, sleep with a French girl here and a Rumanian whore there, and in Kiev you chase the Russian girls; and when you go on leave and stop over in some place like Warsaw or Krakow, you can’t resist the pretty Polish girls either. It’s impossible … and … and … and—” again he choked down that horrible mass of something between a sob and rage as if it were offal—“and then you get home, no warning ofcourse, after fifteen months, and there’s a guy lying on your sofa, a man, a Russian, that’s right, a Russian’s lying on your sofa, the phonograph’s playing a tango, and your wife’s sitting at the table wearing red pajamas and mixing something … yes that’s how it was, exactly. God knows I sent home enough schnapps and liqueurs … from France, Hungary, Russia. The guy’s so scared he half swallows his cigarette, and your wife screams like an animal … I tell you, like an animal!” A shudder passed over his massive shoulders. “Like an animal, I tell you, that’s all I know.” Andreas looked back in alarm, just one brief glance. But the blond fellow couldn’t hear anything. He was calmly sitting there, quite calmly, almost comfortably, and spreading scarlet jam from an immaculate glass jar onto white bread. He spread the jam neatly and calmly, taking bites like a civil servant, almost like a chief inspector. Maybe the blond fellow was an inspector. The unshaven soldier was silent, and something made him shiver. Nobody could have heard what he said. The train had torn away his words … they had flown away, flown off inaudibly with the rush of air … maybe they had flown back to Dresden … to Radebeul … where the little fly was perched somewhere and the girl in the yellow dress was leaning against her bicycle … still leaning … still leaning.…
    “Yes,” said the unshaven soldier, speaking rapidly, almost impersonally, as if he wanted to reel off a tape he had begun. “I cleared out, simply cleared out. On the way there I had put on my work pants, I wanted to save my new black Panzer ones with the creases in them for my leave. I had been looking forward to seeing my wife … God, I was looking forward to it … not only to … not only to that. No, no!” He shouted: “It’s something quite different, the thing you look forward to. It’s at home, it’s your wife, see? What you do with the other women is nothing, you’ve forgotten it after an hour … and now, now a Russian’s sitting there, a tall guy, I could see that much, andthe way he was lying there and smoking … nowhere else in the world can a man lounge around and smoke that way. Besides, I could tell by his nose he was a Russian … you can always tell by their noses.…”
    I must pray more, Andreas thought, I’ve hardly prayed since I left home. His companion fell silent again, looking out into the gentle countryside with the sunlight lying over it like a golden shimmer. The blond fellow was still sitting there, he drank some coffee from a flask; now he was eating white bread and butter, the butter was in a brand-new container; he was eating very methodically, very neatly. I must pray more, Andreas thought, and just as he was about to begin the unshaven soldier started up again. “Yes, I cleared out. By the next train, and took the whole lot back with me. Booze and meat and money, all that money I’d taken along, everything was for her, don’t you see? Why else would I have lugged all that stuff along?